Turning into the off ramp 24/7 gas station with built in “restaurant” it was just the way that it was any other non-Friday night here in the Podunk's, random kids with daddy’s keys and an allowance that were gassing up for riding around to look cool. One face happened to be a familiar one for the pair and surprising.

“Drake!” Kaeri yelled as she got out of the car and ran to the average height boy, this late at night there couldn’t be a good reason to see him here. Worries aside, she always blindsided him with a hug trying to get rid of the ensuing face of sheer shock that anyone could be that excited to see him without being related to him. “Why the hell are you out this late? And I Will kill you if you say that you walked here by yourself for some stupid shit your mom wanted.”

The poor boy still had that same astonished look though he would half shocked hug back, and he was quick to change to the dorky cute smile he wore most often. Drake looked a bit sheepish this time though. “Hey Kae, I um actually Didn’t walk here. Cause I bought this! Today...”

She looked in the direction he hitched his thumb over his shoulder and noticed he’d managed to save up for the truck he’d been talking about for months. “Woah you mean that craigslist ad didn’t sell on you? That’s great! Wait. You didn’t tell me you’d taken the driving test already, what the hell man! I was going to celebrate it with you since you finally did something for yourself.”

“Relax relax relax.” he said without a pause between words. “I begged my dad to help me get it before I take the test, I told him it was my dream truck, and it wasn’t fair to make me miss out on it when I worked my ass off for the money myself. Just means it’s in his name until I have my license. Even had him put my name on the title so I know he ain’t lying to keep it later.”

Drake had already lost enough to his father for ‘one reason or another,’ at least that’s what he would say when he didn’t want to remember it. Thoughts of protecting him made her blood boil remembering what the POS had done but it wasn’t her place to do something about the something she’d only heard second hand. “And that’s stopped him from doing it before? Like with your first tax return ever? Or Like with your first paycheck from a real job? He’s been Father of the Year for so long now ya know I guess I expected differently for once.”

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He looked sheepish and I needed to find food, so I hugged him and said, “Call me on discord, later?”

It was probably more about something deep and profound about short life, than it was because I had (like every other human being) said the dumbest thing I could possibly have said. That was the last thing I’d said to my best friend. Of course I’m supposed to remember that ‘I’m just a kid,’ that ‘it wasn’t my fault,’ or my favorite by far ‘no one knows when.’

That was my problem though, there’s always more that not everyone knows. When you think you know someone, you also think that you know everything there is to know about them; that there’s no question inside your own mind you could Ever possibly Not Know something about them. I knew how kind he was, I knew how ‘willing to help Anyone’ that he was, but I suppose I didn’t see how vulnerable he was.

Humans always want to think the people they love and trust the most do in fact feel the same to them do they not? Maybe it was just all the guilt that I felt for not staying to talk more after he shared the best thing his sperm donor had ever done as a father. Tell you the truth? I’m pretty sure it’s just because I’m not a human being, and the fact that I will live 16 times longer than my best friend did without even trying to live the fullest, longest life my people can get out of this side of the Glimmerglass.

It was weird to think I left Otherworld for this place and that the closest thing to love I’ve experienced was a brother who wasn’t Fae. Drake was entirely human and even after he found out my secret he had stayed. After everything we had been through it seemed like a fever dream to have lost him in this way. Worst of all was the way it happened left nothing behind which was devastating to any Fae, there was nothing left for interment and no way to admire his beauty for the rest of my eternity either. I’d never get permission to stop his decomposition for infinite if there had been, they don’t get a choice like we do about that.

The humans have their own strange custom though and... and... somehow it’s perfect in the most horrifying way possible for the Fae.